With more than two million page views and more than 4,500 items, this blog provides news and commentary on public policy, business and economic issues related to the $3 billion California stem cell agency, officially known as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine(CIRM). David Jensen, a retired California newsman, has published this blog since January 2005. His email address is djensen@californiastemcellreport.com.

Sunday, January 04, 2015

The Los Angeles Times, the newspaper with the largest
circulation in California, today took a crack at the California stem cell
agency and its “reboot” as CIRM 2.0.

The piece was written by Michael Hiltzik, the Pulitzer
Prize-winning columnist who has often been a critic of the $3 billion state research
program. The springboard for the article
was the restructuring of the agency’s grant process, which its new president,
Randy Mills, has dubbed CIRM 2.0. The
abbreviation comes from the formal name of the agency, the California Institute
for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM).

Hiltzik wrote,

“Biomedical researchers are sure to find a lot to like about
CIRM 2.0, especially Mills' commitment to streamline the program's grant and
loan approval process for projects aimed at clinical trials of potential
therapies. Reviews of applications take about 22 months on average; Mills hopes
to cut that to about three months.”

Hiltzik said the new effort, which began just this month,
was initiated by Mills after “he reached the conclusion that 'there was a lot
of room for improvement.’” Hiltzik
wrote,

“That's a striking admission for a program that already has
allocated roughly two-thirds of its original $3-billion endowment.”

Hiltzik discussed the pressure to fulfill the public
expectations for quick development of stem cell cures that were generated by
the 2004 ballot campaign that created the agency in 2004. He also addressed the
pressure to find new sources of funding by 2020, when the money is expected to
run out. Hiltzik wrote,

“Mills says winning approval for more public funding isn't
the goal of CIRM 2.0. ‘It's not our job at CIRM to extend the life of CIRM,’ he
told me. Instead, he couches the need for urgency in terms of serving patients.”

Hiltzik continued,

“As head of CIRM, however, Mills can't escape the tyranny of
public expectations. CIRM's mandate, as he describes it, is ‘to accelerate stem
cell treatments to patients with unmet needs.’ That presupposes that stem cell
treatments exist or will be found for the major medical conditions at which
Proposition 71 was aimed. What if science and nature don't cooperate?”

Hiltzik also touched on the competition involving funding of
clinical trials and funding of basic research.

“Academic researchers may have a legitimate concern about
too much money shifting toward late-stage research prematurely. ‘The field is
so young,’ says Arnold
Kriegstein, director of the stem cell lab at UC San Francisco, ‘that
it's unreasonable to expect that fully transformational therapies are just a
few years away. This is the time to continue basic research programs, not cut
them off.’”

Hiltzik concluded,

“Despite the program's unquestionably positive impact on
stem cell science, especially in California, it still lacks a coherent sense of
its proper role. CIRM 2.0 is the latest effort to find that role, but it may
not be the last.”

1 comment:

I'm more optimistic than Dr. Kriegstein. I agree that we are far from knowing as much as we can about human stem cells. While my lab strives to solidify our basic knowledge about human pluripotent stem cells, we are also inspired by the opportunity that CIRM is providing for academic scientists to achieve a goal that most of us can only think about- helping patients with incurable disease.

About Me

The California Stem Cell Report is the only nongovernmental website devoted solely to the $3 billion California stem cell agency. The report is published by David Jensen, who worked for 22 years for The Sacramento Bee in a variety of editing positions, including executive business editor and special projects editor. He was the primary editor on the 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning series, "The Monkey Wars" by Deborah Blum, which dealt with opposition to research on primates. Jensen served as a press aide in the 1974 campaign and first administration of Gov. Jerry Brown. (Time served: two years and one week.) He writes from his sailboat on the west coast of Mexico with occasional visits to land. Jensen began writing about the stem cell agency in 2005, noting that it is an unprecedented effort that uniquely combines big science, big business, big academia, big politics, religion, ethics and morality as well as life and death. The California Stem Cell Report has been identified as one of the best stem cell sites on the Internet. Its readership includes the media (both mainstream and science), a wide range of academic/research institutions globally, the NIH and California policy makers.